A Series of (In)Decent Proposals
by Auntleona0
Summary: Throughout the course of their lives, James will ask Lily to marry him many times. A 13-part series of their many proposals, with 12 no's and one very jubilant yes.
1. 1971: The One with the Iron Grip

**A/N: So this story falls within the universe of my completed, multi-chapter story, The Bet. No understanding or prior reading of The Bet is necessary to read & understand this story as it's going to be a series of proposals that might exist in the canon universe. I'm writing because I wanted to release a few stories while I work on my next-multichap work and one of my anonymous reviewers requested this.**

 **It's going to be 13 short parts (some shorter than others) released over the next two weeks or so. Pretty much everything's written already and I'm really excited to share with you.**

 **So with nothing more to say, hope everyone enjoys!**

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Nice, solid, steady and decidedly unlikely to collapse in on her and send her plummeting to her death, it was Lily's opinion that human beings were meant to keep their two feet planted on the ground.

She'd only been at Hogwarts for a few weeks, however, and Lily had already learned that wizards didn't care for personal safety. They let all manner of beasts – werewolves and vampires and supposedly cannibalistic bears – roam the woods next to a children's school. They taught eleven-year-olds spells that set their surroundings on fire. And, they celebrated a sport in which they flew around, hundreds of meters above the good, safe earth, with nothing but a narrow stick of wood to keep them alive and aloft.

On the grounds that she was too young to die, Lily had tried to gain an exemption from her first flying lesson. Lily had beseeched her flying instructor, Madame Lee, to spare her the danger, reminded the well-muscled woman that the Evanses would certainly disapprove of such an activity and hadn't signed a slip of permission. Crossing her arms so that the taut muscles bulged even more noticeably, Madame Lee had promised Lily that her classes had a one hundred percent survival rate.

From where he loitered with his pack of bullies, Sirius Black had called her a baby and had a good laugh at her expense. The shame was enough to get her to straddle the broom and wait in line with the rest of her classmates. All the while, Severus whispered at her side that she'd be fine. That if a dunce like Potter could fly about with no trouble, she was sure to be a star.

Lily appreciated his efforts, she truly did, but now that she was waiting to kick off from the ground, she was finding it harder to concentrate on Sev's words. The sanded wood of her broom handle was slick from the sweat gathering beneath her grip. Above her, the sky was a pale blue that taunted her, misleadingly pleasing to the eye. A few of her classmates were similarly nervous, holding their brooms far from their bodies like they were poisonous snakes, but the majority were relaxed. Everyone was giggling and swapping stories of their adventures in the skies. Lily couldn't make the words out. All she could hear was her own labored breathing.

Madame Lee approached to correct Sev on the way he was holding his broom. Without his attention, all she could do was contemplate the height of the trees that surrounded her and how a fall from one of them would mean almost certain death. And they would likely fly much, much higher.

"You know, I don't think you're a baby."

Lily jolted, almost tripping over her broom at the unexpected voice by her side. Not only that, but it was the first kind word James Potter had said to her since she'd called him a 'snot-nosed punk' at breakfast last Tuesday. Yet there he was, smiling and twirling his broom around like a baton. It was likely for effect, to show off how comfortable he was with the broomstick, that he could flip it from one hand to the other with his eyes closed, and Lily was impressed against her own will.

"I don't think you're a baby," James repeated, "But Sirius is right that you don't have to be scared. Nothing frightening about flying."

Lily mumbled out what her grandfather had always said about sky divers, "If people were meant to leave the ground, they'd have been born with wings."

"Do you swim?" James asked after standing uncharacteristically quiet for a moment. When Lily nodded, James said, "Well, if people were meant to swim, they'd have been born with gills. That's the same thing, isn't it?"

"That's not the same at all!" Lily cried. "Your body can swim all on its own. This requires tools!"

"I thought muggles had those airplanes that go up in the sky. That's a tool, too," James pointed out.

Lily paused, in the strange position of having been rhetorically outwitted by Potter, who just yesterday had charmed Albert Albertson to belch every time someone said the word 'castle' within hearing distance. She'd only flown once, to Ireland for her maternal grandmother's funeral, and after the initial panic, she'd settled into the ride. But, she couldn't shake the sense that this was somehow different.

"I don't like that I can see everything, that there isn't something to keep me on the broom. What if I fall to the side?" Lily whispered.

James scratched his head. "How good's your grip?"

"My grip?"

"Yeah, like how tight can you hold on? Because if you can hold on tight, you won't fall. No matter what."

James presented his hand to her and told her to clench it with all her strength, that he'd tell her whether she was safe or not. She took his adolescent boy hand, no different than her own, and squeezed. She squeezed as tight and as hard as she could, face turning red with expended effort. James made a big show of moaning and groaning at the pain, to the point where she couldn't tell whether he was humoring her or if she was really in danger of crushing his phalanges.

When her own hand started to hurt, she released his with a heavy sigh. James groaned and shook his hand out comically.

"That's some grip! You've got nothing to worry about. You could ring a grown man's neck with those hands," James said.

Lily laughed in spite of herself, in spite of her fear, and climbed atop her broomstick once more.

"On the count of three, you're to kick off like we practiced," Madame Lee announced. "One, two, _three_."

Lily rose up, trainers dangling in empty air. She was flying – hovering more accurately – but _flying_ all the same. Tilting the stem of her broom upward, she edged slightly higher. Her heart beat erratically, but it wasn't solely from fear. She felt the same way she had when she'd first performed magic purposefully, as if she'd unlocked a world of power and opportunity that she'd never believed possible.

On Madame Lee's orders, they all descended, only to take off again and this time drift a little higher. They repeated the process to gain familiarity with the launch.

A shout of joy drew her attention, and Lily saw that James had abandoned the rest of the class and was hovering high in the sky. The sun was at his back so that she couldn't look directly at him without shielding her eyes. She lifted one of her hands from the broom without thinking.

Two things happened simultaneously.

The first was that James flipped his broom so that he was hovering upside down. Lily nearly burst into tears at the sudden and explosive fear that James Potter might fall to his death in front of her. The second, was that Lily realized she was no longer digging her hands into the broom's handle like Potter had suggested, and was in fact holding on by one hand.

All of her old fear returned to her, and Lily flung her arms backward in a wheeling motion of surprise. Sev was at her side – too close – and her elbow made contact with his nose. She heard the crunch of a break and saw blood seep out of his left nostril. Sev's broom tilted dangerously backwards, like he might slide right off, but his legs remained closed around his broomstick and he didn't fall off. Frantic, Lily returned her hands to their death grip on her broomstick and nudged her broom to return to the ground.

"Madame Lee! Madame Lee!" Lily called.

Severus joined her on the ground, but his nose was now completely obscured by the torrent of blood that he'd unthinkingly rubbed across his face. He kept his head pointedly turned away, and Lily knew that he was crying and trying to hide the tears.

Still in the air, her classmates started to question what had happened, and Shelia Marks piped in with an answer: "Lily just tried to knock Snape off his broom. Gave him a bloody nose."

"What, no –!"

The Gryffindor boys started to clap and cheer from their broomsticks. James was still upside down.

"Bloody brilliant, Evans!" Sirius crowed. "Don't worry, you'll get him next time."

"I think I'm in love!" James said. "Marry me, Evans!"

"I wish I'd broken your hand for real!" Lily shouted back. She stomped her foot and when Sev went to the Hospital Wing, she escorted him. Nothing had changed after all: Sev was still her friend and Potter was still a prat.

Only he was the prat who had tried to make her feel better. And maybe, she could secretly admit that there was something to be said for that.

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 **A/N: And that's that! Please review if you enjoyed and expect the follow-up tomorrow.**


	2. 1977: The One with the Snitch

**A/N: Just a short one for chapter 2. I'm going to be on a 12-hour car trip tomorrow, so expect the update on Sunday. Let me know what you think!**

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 **December 19, 1977**

The castle was rich with the sound of students packing and laughing and making their melodramatic, tearful goodbyes, but tomorrow the corridors would echo with their own ringing stillness as the student body departed for winter hols. It was to be a classic, white Christmas, with snow already packed a meter high on the ground, and if it weren't for her boyfriend, Lily would have been eager to leave. Bound for their first time apart since they'd started dating two months before, Lily sat on the floor of his dormitory, strongly debating whether she could _stupefy_ him and sneak him home in her trunk with no one the wiser. The stupidly sweet faces he was making at her gift weren't helping matters.

In truly typical fashion, the two had decided to make a competition of their first ever gift-exchange. Bragging rights would go to the victor, and Lily had tackled the challenge with her characteristic gusto. Those efforts had paid off. James had done well, true, giving her a tasteful yet obscenely expensive bracelet that was charmed to tell her the weather and currently rested on her pale wrist. His bags of coin couldn't hope to compete with her gift, however.

A golden snitch, and not just any snitch, but the one that Lewis Thurston had caught to win Britain the World Cup in 1971, one of the most oft-discussed matches in history – six days of play, Turkey up by 130, and a narcoleptic referee – and the first professional match that James had ever attended alongside his parents. Since he'd tossed aside the gift wrappings, James had held the snitch in his palms with all the gentleness one might show an injured baby bird. He was half a second away from making cooing noises to it.

Seeing the way his eyes took on a bright zeal, half-lidded but intense behind his specs, the same look Lily sometimes caught directed her way when she was talking with one of her friends or studying with James in the library, made the steep cost worth every minute of misery. (The legendary snitch had been one collectible of many in McGonagall's envy-inducing collection, and Lily would be waking up at 7 am for the rest of term to mark first-year Transfiguration papers as payment for their professor's parting with it.)

"Marry me," James breathed, gazing with unfiltered adoration at the love of his life. It just so happened that was the golden snitch and not his girlfriend.

Lily chuckled with the self-satisfaction of someone who knew they had won, and said, "I already gave you one wonderful gift today. Don't go begging for a second."

"You're right. I'm never asking you for anything ever again. You've already given me so much," James said.

"What are the chances you remember that promise come tomorrow?"

She'd lost him to Quidditch mode, the place his mind sometimes disappeared to wherein he'd take on a singular discipline. All he could focus on were dives and maneuvers and the crack of a beater's bat. No time for pranks or class or even girlfriends.

Lily didn't begrudge him his passion. Instead, she was charmed by it. Standing up from the pile of blankets she'd assembled on the floor, Lily went to him on the bed. She stood beside him, one arm wrapped loose around his shoulders – tendons and muscles relaxed like the world had rolled right off Atlas's shoulders – and she pressed a kiss to his head.

Muffled by the messy mass of his hair, Lily whispered, "Happy Christmas, James."

Shocking her every expectation, James tore his gaze away from his beloved snitch to stare her straight in the eyes, one arm coming to lock around her waist. "The happiest Christmas, Lily."

She smiled.


	3. 1978: The One with the Chicken Soup

**A/N: Another short one. The next couple will be longer. That said, I hope everyone likes the absurdity in spite of the brevity.**

 **February 20, 1978**

A bout of flu had struck the student body like a bullet. One day everyone was healthy and the next, fevers were rising. Nothing Madame Pomfrey couldn't cure with a dose of potion, and by lunchtime everyone had returned to normal.

Everyone that is, except James and Sirius. When everyone first started to showcase symptoms, Marlene and Lily had shared harrowing stories of their own childhood flus, discussing how most people conflated flus with the common cold but once you'd experienced the full impact of two weeks of symptoms, you never made that same mistake again. The boys had been intrigued. Enough so that when Pomfrey spooned the cure into their mouths, they'd held it until her back was turned and they could spit it into the rubbish bin.

It was safe to say they were regretting their decision now.

Rather than hole up in their dormitory like any sane person would – though they'd proven they were anything but when they refused their medicine – James and Sirius had decided to sweat out their germs in the middle of the common room. They reigned like very pale, very weak lords over their housemates. Pureblood students approached every few hours for a report on the terrors of the flu, hanging off every word of Sirius's affected whisper.

Lily returned from class to see they hadn't moved a centimeter from where she'd last left them. Stuck by the chills, Sirius was wrapped up in every blanket from his and James' bed plus a quilt that Shelia had been kind enough to drape over his feet. The opposite, James ran a high fever and lay on the couch dressed in nothing but his undershirt and pants.

"And your body really aches, like for no reason?" a starry-eyed first-year asked them.

Without opening his eyes, Sirius murmured, "Yes. It's like running twenty straight miles. That's not the worst of it, though. The worst is the fever. The hallucinations."

"Drama queen," a third-year muttered as she passed Lily towards the portrait hole. Lily didn't disagree.

Lily loved James. A lot. To the point that she was often shocked by how much she missed him when they were separated by classes or how much her heart swelled when he smiled. Her love, however, was not enough to make her want to touch his sickness-ridden body. She'd discovered yesterday that James craved physical affection when he was in pain, and she dreaded the cuddles he would inevitably demand.

"How are you feeling?" Lily asked, side-stepping the crouching first-year to sit on a wicker-back chair at their sides.

"Like time's lost all meaning," Sirius said as James replied, "It hurts."

James' voice was nasal and weak from his blocked nose. Every breath he took came belabored out of his open mouth.

"Now would be a good time to remind you that you brought this on yourselves," Remus said sternly. He and Mary were busy at a game of chess. Equally matched, neither of them had touched a piece in five minutes, just staring at the board, considering.

James whimpered at the unfairness of it all and closed his eyes. With his lower lip jutting out and his hair slicked back with sweat, he looked boyishly innocent. Sighing, Lily lowered to her knees at his side and sorted through the bag of supplies she'd brought for her ailing boyfriend. She'd brought aspirin, chicken soup, and plenty of water amongst other essentials. A wet towel in hand, she began to mop at his brow. James shifted eagerly so that his head rested against her arm, and she allowed him the contact despite her misgivings.

The towel was warm and as she massaged it against his sinuses, He looked peaceful except for the two spots of red color on his cheeks.

"Sirius, try to take a shower at some point today. The steam's good for opening up your sinuses," Lily ordered.

"Yes, ma'am."

Leaving the hot press to James' head, she rifled out the container of soup and spooned them each a portion. James wrinkled his nose, not hungry in the slightest, but she convinced him after talk of electrolytes and chest mucus that he didn't understand. The basic treatments her parents had taken for granted were treated like the highest wisdom from her ailing patients.

Suddenly, James drew a great, sucking breath through his left nostril. He shot straight up, surprise quickly replaced by pure elation.

"I can breathe again!" James shouted.

"Keep the warm cloth on you and you may be able to clear up the other nostril, too," Lily said.

James smiled widely. "This is because of you? Merlin, marry me you goddess of a woman!"

Lily looked at him in all of his ill glory, the boy who had stripped down to his pants in the middle of the common room, who had chosen to have the flu for kicks, and couldn't go a minute without coughing violently into the crook of his elbow – the kind of coughing where she could hear the mucus grinding about in the back of his throat.

"Not to kick a man when he's down," Lily said, " _but_ hard pass."


	4. 1978: The One with the Endorphins

**A/N: So raised the rating on this fic just for this chapter…**

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 **April 30, 1978**

There was only a single mirror in the seventh-year, Gryffindor boys' dormitory, and it had fogged to the point of uselessness as gasping breaths heated the room. Everything was hot, like her internal temperature had turned up to one hundred, and if Lily were to bleed, she was certain her blood would boil.

She didn't want to think about how she was hot. She had better places for her mind to focus. Frustrated by the distraction, Lily pushed the sheet that covered her to the side, batting it away with clumsy hands until it fell to the floor. James bucked his hips encouragingly, and Lily complied with his silent request, sitting up straight in the exposed room. Instantly, James' eyes zeroed in on the flesh that had been hidden from him, taking a long, appreciative look at the expanse of her stomach, her nipples, the flesh of her neck burned red with exertion.

They'd been doing this – shagging, making love, fucking and every other word for the act – for a little over a month, since James' birthday in March. There was an insatiability to the both of them, a giggling and urgent need to escape into dark corners whenever the moment presented itself and rediscover one another anew. Every time, Lily expected to find that she'd become inoculated to the intimacy. She didn't think sex could always be so intense. Eventually, the shine would fade away like an oft-used galleon.

But this was not the time, and Lily shuddered with the power of it. The shiver started in the pit of her stomach and expanded outwards luxuriously, making her aware of the ache in her breasts and the tingling nerves of her arms. Nowhere was there more pressure than in the sensitive space between her legs, and for a second, Lily thought she was going to burst, but the desperate build didn't crest, not fully.

Her mind narrowed. Chasing her pleasure, she began to slide her hips in a fluid motion back-and-forth. With each push forward, James' cock pressed against her front wall, and her clit slammed into the hard plane of his stomach. James' hands wrapped around her waist to help her move, and Lily looked down at him fondly. Equally caught up in the moment, James face was screwed up into an expression of intense concentration. He was determined and generous to her, and the way he would gnaw on his lower lip was always sure to make her heart flutter.

Keeping that kind of weight on her clit was sure to yield results, and sure enough an orgasm galloped out of her. Every piece of her body drew tight like she might snap. All she wanted was to grab hold of that intensity – the rush that was so strong, the line between pleasure and agony blurred – and prolong it, like she was sure that given just a few extra seconds she might unlock the secrets of the universe. Heaven on earth.

Her body spasmed and her nails scraped at James' shoulders as she sought purchase. When it was over, Lily felt adrift. She slumped down so that her chin tucked into his shoulder and breathed in the smell of his skin. He was still inside her, gentle if insistent, and she waited patiently for him to finish as well. A gargle of pleasure sounded near her ear to let her know he was nearing. Helping him along, Lily whispered in his ear about how she loved him and wanted him and he made her feel so good, to the point that she felt a reluctant trembling of pleasure herself despite her body's fatigue.

James hips bucked, stilled. He moaned, he groaned.

Then he started to babble. It was hard for her to make out the rush of words that were streaming out of him as he came, but she caught the gist. He loved her, he'd die for her, he never wanted to leave her.

Clear and very distinct at the end though, Lily heard him murmur out, "Mary."

She rolled off of him, and James closed his eyes. He looked perfectly sated, but Lily's eyes were narrowed with assessment.

"Why did you say Mary's name when you were finishing inside me?" Lily asked. Her voice was misleadingly gentle, and James eyes shot open at the dangerous undertone.

"What?"

"You said my dormmate's name. Why?" Lily repeated sweetly.

"I didn't…that's – I…fuck."

"If you didn't say Mary's name, what did you say?" Lily insisted.

James turned red. "I can't tell you."

Five months ago, a faux pas like this would have ended in calamity. Lily's pride would have overpowered her heart, and she would have called off the whole experiment of them dating with nary a backwards glance. But despite his offensive mistake, she didn't doubt that he meant it when he told her he loved her, that sincerity shone through him every time.

At her silence, James ventured, "Are you very angry?"

"No," Lily said after some consideration, "but you should be petrified. I can't imagine what Marlene's going to do to you when she finds out."

James crossed his arms behind his bed, and his face took on a goofy expression, goofier than he normally looked after coming. He didn't look half as apologetic as he ought.

"I'm not joking. Marlene's gotten frighteningly tough these past few months. It's all those practices with Alice," Lily warned.

"Just for you, love, there will be no more talk of you, marry, and me," James agreed.

"That's right."

James just smiled.

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 **A/N: In a bid to gain some time for the pieces I haven't finished, I'll be posting the next installment on Friday. Let me know what you thought of Lily's cluelessness!**


	5. 1978: The One with the Goodbye

**A/N: Sorry for the delay. I had some kind of mental block that just stopped me from posting even though this has been wrapped up in a bow and ready for posting for the last three weeks. Hopefully, I can get the next chapter out more quickly. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to review!**

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 **June 30, 1978**

It was over. Never again would she take her breakfast in the Great Hall. Never again would she dodge past Mrs. Norris in the corridors or watch as Professor Flitwick prepared the tree for Christmas. There would be no more of Hagrid and his well-trained boar hound or the disturbing grating of chains when she happened past the Bloody Baron. Her time at Hogwarts had come to an end.

Most of her classmates had taken on an almost frenetic energy in preparation for their release, like the whole thing was one big joke. All week, James, Sirius, and Alice had darted through the castle bidding goodbye to everything in sight – from the portraits to the professors to the furniture. Lily approached her end at Hogwarts with gravity, trepidation.

James had asked her to join him outside before they were set to leave the castle for good. She found him on the hill overlooking the Black Lake, where they'd shared their first kiss and their first unofficial date. He'd discarded his robes at the base of an elm and swung his arms back and forth erratically.

"Alright, you?" Lily said, leaning in to kiss him when she drew near.

He turned, only allowing her to kiss him on the cheek. Looking at him more carefully, Lily sensed a nervous tension in his body. Perhaps the end of their final term had finally sunken in.

"It's beautiful out today, isn't it? Picturesque," James said.

Lily followed his gaze out over the lake. Silently, she disagreed. Yes, the sky was clear and the sun was high. For once the waters of the Black Lake were even blue, cast in a friendly light by the sun. It was the wind that bothered her, stronger than a breeze and emerging seemingly from nowhere. It ruffled the leaves of the trees and blew past the grass giving the landscape a life of its own that unnerved her.

"We don't have much time before we have to leave," Lily reminded him.

"I know, but there's something I wanted to ask you first." He took hold of both her hands, and Lily was filled with the sudden and _inexplicable_ dread that he was going to chuck her then and there. "Lily…I love you. I love you more than anyone I've ever known. You're perfect, or well, practically perfect…perfect for me, let's say, and while my life was pretty good before you were a part of it, it wasn't nearly as good."

James delivered his speech while staring fixedly into her eyes, gone wide at the sappiness of it all. She was touched by his words, but the flipping of her stomach was more anxious than pleased. Refusing to contemplate where this might be going, her brain shut down entirely, and she stared mutely into his earnest and beloved face.

"I love you, too," Lily managed on auto-pilot.

Smiling, James said, "I know, and that's why I wanted to ask you…Lily, will you marry me?"

The wind stopped, like the world had gone still at James' unexpected proposal. Lily was certainly still with the weight of it. She found herself thankful that wizard tradition didn't require the man to go down on one knee because Lily didn't think she could bear to look down at him in that moment, see his earnest eyes gazing back. Better to look up like she always did. It would have been even better if she could look away for a second to gain some composure, but the stillness had paralyzed her and she was helpless but to look him directly in the eye.

When speech finally returned to her, it came snapping back like an elastic, unplanned and with a jolt.

"Oh my god, what were you thinking?" Lily gasped. James jaw snapped together convulsively, and Lily wished she could take back the words, replace them with something gentler, but she couldn't stop talking let alone rewind time. "How can we commit to that? We don't even know what our life and our relationship are going to look like outside of Hogwarts."

"I see."

"Don't do that," Lily said. Her emotions were a see-saw: on one side sat blind-panic and on the other irritation. With just a word, James could tip her either way.

"Do what?" James demanded.

"You have a tone," Lily said.

"I don't have a tone."

"Yes, you do."

There was no point in denying it. James was angry, and his voice had taken on the serrated edge of a knife.

James worked his jaw some more. From its tensing, Lily could see him consider forgiving her and then retract the absolution as if she was inside his own mind. If she could see herself in the mirror, she was sure there would be similar signs of frustration on her face.

"Fine, I'm upset," James said.

"Why are you upset? I love you. Just because I don't want to get married doesn't mean that's changed."

"Because what does it matter what our future looks like outside of Hogwarts? From where I'm standing, I can't picture a scenario that doesn't have you and me being together. So clearly, you view our relationship differently." James said, voice rising towards the end until he was shouting his ire over the lake.

Lily closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. Remus had taught her to take a few counts when her pride felt threatened, said it prevented him from making costly mistakes all the time. When she finished the breathing exercise, she could see their situation more clearly, see the fear and hurt in James' eyes.

As softly as she could, Lily said, "James, the future is this big and scary thing, and I don't know what it looks like for me or for anyone else right now. I've never been able to picture it. I don't have the kind of surety about my life and my place in the world that you've always had. This isn't about who loves who more. I love you so, so much, and the way I see the future, what I can see of it, of course I want to be with you. But I don't have that confidence that what I can picture is what the future holds in store. I can't make promises. So, since the last thing I ever want to do is make a decision that hurts you, I can't marry you."

Tears welled in her eyes, but they didn't bud over. Hurting him now, even if it was to spare him from the possibility of a much greater hurt later, was awful. Worse than being the object of his anger. He truly listened and digested what she had to say though, and the anger in his face leaked away. James was a far cry from happy, but maybe he'd conducted his own breathing exercises because he was calming down fast.

Squeezing her hand, still locked with his, James said, "I'm not nearly as confident about the future as you think I am. It may seem that way, but there's a big question mark hanging over my life, too. Who knows what this war is going to turn into or what our options are. I don't know where we'll go next or if we'll be able to stick with our friends, and that's terrifying for me. But I figure if we're together, nothing on the other side can be that bad."

"I will be there, James. I will," Lily promised.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, feet lifting straight off the ground, so that she could lay her ear to his shoulder. The impulse to bind them together through marriage made sense to her. No different than her desire to bind him to her through their hug. She breathed a shaky sigh when his arms wrapped tight as a vice around her in return.

Against his shoulder, Lily said, "And just because I don't want to marry you right now doesn't mean I never want to. I mean…you don't need to worry about whether I'm a part of the future you can't predict. When the time's right, I'll be here, and then we'll talk."

"You're very reasonable," James said.

"One of us has to –"

Lily was cut off by a bevy of hoots and jeers. Reluctantly, she broke their embrace and turned to see all of their friends racing up the hill to join them. They were all bedecked in muggle top hats and so much glitter that they'd be leaving their mark everywhere they went for days.

"You two are sickening!" Shelia shouted.

Remus raced forward with an extra top hat for each of them. As Lily adjusted the hat and inventoried her friends, Marlene threw fistfuls of glitter in their direction.

Under his breath, Lily heard Sirius murmur to James, "Did she –?" but James only shook his head in answer. There was no time to talk about his rejected proposal, however, because everyone was talking at once about their final sending off. Mary was so petite that her top hat kept falling to the side, and Marlene took great pains to correct it for her, cooing and prodding affectionately. Peter told everyone how he'd already reserved them boats, so they didn't have to rush to the dock just yet. Alice loudly bid adieu to the elm tree behind them all.

Lily continued to hold James' hand amidst the chaos. The familiar voices and mannerisms of her friends were a comfort. She didn't know whether to smile or cry.

When the time came, they all walked together to the dock. As they first arrived at Hogwarts, they would leave it. Hagrid was down by the lake, organizing the students into the boats that would bear them to the train station. In her first year, Lily had crossed the lake alongside Severus and Mary, then a stranger. Had she remained friends with Severus, he still wouldn't have fit inside the boat with them any longer. They'd all grown, even Lily with her oft-mocked height. She couldn't believe how small the boats were. While she wasn't paying attention they'd all changed.

Lily was surprised when Mary settled into the front of her boat. Lily would have predicted that Mary would make her departure with Marlene, but the nostalgia of their first day at Hogwarts won out. Marlene boarded with Alice instead. Everyone pairing up in the same combinations as they'd first arrived.

"We've known each other for a long time, haven't we?" Lily said quietly while they waited to set sail.

Mary craned her neck to look back at Lily. "I've enjoyed every minute of it."

Fanned out in a pyramid formation, the boats began their journey across the Lake. Ripples played across the water, a reminder that nothing remained still forever. Lily's heart leapt to her throat and a hundred memories competed for attention in her mind. She wasn't ready to leave. Not yet.

Just like when she first arrived, however, the boats didn't wait for anyone's nerves. Everything was so familiar that Lily thought back to that first trip: her fear of the unknown and worries that she might never fit in with her classmates. Back then, she hadn't the slightest what the future held for her, and yet, the journey had led her to the most marvelous experience a person could ask for. She didn't know the future, but perhaps, like last time, the destination would be worth the fear.

There was one difference between her first journey and her last. This time, there was no awestruck delight as she laid eyes on the castle for the first time. Hogwarts was decidedly and truly behind her.


	6. 1978: The One with the Potters

**July 17, 1978**

Stinchcombe was a sleepy parish and an even sleepier village. The townspeople went about their affairs with a tidy industriousness that called little attention to themselves. There was a sense of balance to the parish within the meeting of the quaint village and the surrounding countryside. The environment allowed the townsfolk to cull the fields and in exchange they kept to their village's borders.

Only one estate imposed its stark humanness on the landscape. The Potter's manor sat atop acres of cleared land, overlooking the vale to the River Severn. Euphemia Potter had assured Lily that the manor wasn't nearly as large as it seemed, that the high-vaulted ceilings lent it an imposing air but that the eight-bedroom structure hardly qualified as a manor at all. Lily privately disagreed.

Lily had only arrived the day before. Since their sending off at Hogwarts, Lily had spent two weeks with her parents, weeks that went a long way in reminding her why parents and children were meant to separate after a point. She and James were set to move into their own flat by the end of the month, but at his parents' insistence, she had flooed down to spend the week getting to know them.

Euphemia and Fleamont Potter turned out to be incredibly supportive of their son's new girlfriend, sweeping aside (for the most part) Lily's wariness from the Head Boy incident. The sitting room was a temple to James, and Euphemia had kept Lily up until one in the morning showing her photographs from his childhood and recounting stories from his conception onward. Fortunately, James was impossible to embarrass, and he took this fawning as a matter of course. That morning, Lily had been woken at the cusp of dawn for a walk of the grounds with Fleamont and then breakfast over the paper. They'd taken her for a tour of the village, pointing out every shopfront as well as those long gone and cooing encouragingly over her familiarity with muggle customs – blatant political signaling for her benefit.

Only with great reluctance had Euphemia agreed to give the young couple a break for a few hours of rest. They would rejoin one another that evening for dinner and a fly through the countryside, leaving Lily and James blissfully alone.

She walked through his room slowly, fingering the contraband from Zonko's and opening up all of his drawers. There wasn't much to see that hadn't been on display in his dormitory at Hogwarts, but Lily still scoured the room. Last night, she had been ushered straight to the guest bedroom on the opposite side of the house, the room Euphemia had pointedly informed Lily was nearest her own.

There was a moving photo of James' family on the bureau. James was gap-toothed and nearly seven in the picture, preening for the camera while his parents gave pristine smiles on either side. Lily couldn't help but trace her fingers around the frame. He'd been so young then, yet he looked like a perfect replica, only stretched up and out with some new definition around his jaw.

"My parents adore you," James said, yawning from where he lay on the bed.

Lily didn't turn away from the photograph. "Of course, they do. I'm a delight."

"More like an intolerable brownnoser. 'Yes, Mrs. Potter,' 'the potatoes are wonderful, Mrs. Potter,' 'do tell me about your work, Mr. Potter,'" James mimed.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "You'll be no different when you meet my parents."

"No way. I'm going to be myself and nothing more. Just wait," James said, "…Then again, maybe being an intolerable brownnoser is your natural state."

Lily pounced on him. The bed shuddered once beneath her weight, blankets shifting a centimeter to the side. From her perch atop his knees, Lily gathered up the little bit of fat she could find on his stomach and pinched. He gave a little yelp that was infinitely satisfying, so she decided to do it again. And again.

Waving a warning finger in her face, James adopted his sternest expression, the one that made him look like a rogue librarian and said, "Pinch me one more time…"

"And what?" Lily challenged. She'd never liked a threat that trailed off with an ellipsis, no creativity.

"Pinch me one more time and I'll break up with you," James said. He looked mighty pleased with himself after the words were out of his mouth, and he repeated his threat another time. "Yes, will chuck you right here and now. Can't suffer a girlfriend who goes around pinching me. I just won't have it."

"Really?"

He was so smug. "Pinch me and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

After that, she never really had a choice. Lily reached down and pinched the flesh between the crook of his elbow. Hard. The skin turned white beneath her clenched fingertips. James grimaced.

"Should I tell your parents I need a portkey home?" Lily asked as sweetly as a person could while maintaining a death grip on someone's vulnerable skin.

"Well…I guess you called my bluff," James said after a pause, and then he proceeded to pinch her in return.

She shrieked at the unexpected assault, throwing her arms up to block his hands. Deftly, James flipped them over on the bed, boxing her in between the brackets of his knees. She couldn't do a thing to stop him as he pinched at her arms and her stomach and her legs and everywhere else he could reach.

"Get off me, you big oaf! You freakish giant of a person!" Lily yelled. Had she possessed the sense to date a reasonably sized person, she wouldn't find it so impossible to buck him off. She had no one to blame but herself.

"Whatever you say, shorty," James said – teasingly, bravely, _foolishly_.

Things escalated as terribly and quickly as one might imagine.

Lily gave an almighty heft of her hips to dislodge him and began her counterattack in earnest. In James' favor was his superior strength and long limbs, able to keep her locked in one place as he straddled her waist; In Lily's favor was her righteous fury and the piercing sting of her nails as they sunk into him with every pinch.

To an outsider, it might have looked like they were hellbent on killing one another, but their giggles would have given away the game. Nearly every cry of pain was followed up by a laugh of victory. After hours of restricted contact – a polite hand around her waist or a covert brushing of hands beneath the table – the ability to touch him freely was blissful. He was strong and broad and _hers_ as he lay on top of her. Just to revel in it, Lily pinched his hip.

Determined to end things once and for all, Lily snaked a hand up to rest feather-light against James' throat. She'd learned less than a month into their relationship that he couldn't bear to have anyone touch his neck. They – the Marauders, Lily, and Alice – had sat in the common room, experimenting with their endurance to withstand a gentle touch against the vulnerable expanse of the throat. Everyone had hated the sensation except for Remus who was able to achieve a zen-like calm as people tickled along his skin. James, however, had reacted the worst. He couldn't take it. With a great deal of cajoling and kisses, Lily was able to relax him to the point to accept a soft touch to the side of the neck that slowly drifted along, but he'd seized up several times during the process like he was expecting a knife to the throat. Insultingly, he'd managed better with Sirius. The trust was already built there.

Perhaps he'd been right to distrust her, because she certainly put her knowledge to use now. James spasmed around the hand at his throat, ear tucking into his shoulder as he tried to hide his neck entirely. Lily held firm and added a tickle for good measure. Busy twitching, James was unable to protest as Lily flipped their positions and straddled his waist.

A simultaneous clearing of a throat and a staccato knock at the door interrupted them. They'd purposefully not closed the door entirely, and Euphemia now peaked around the open corner. Conscious of their position, Lily tried to roll to the side (and off Euphemia's son) as fluidly as possible.

"What is it, mum?"

"I was preparing myself afternoon tea and thought I'd ask whether you two are hungry," Euphemia answered.

Having been fed an extravagant breakfast and even more extravagant dinner the night before, Lily couldn't imagine eating another bite. Her stomach already bulged from the servings she'd forced down out of pure politeness. She shook her head.

"Mum, I'm perfectly capable of making my own tea if I decide to," James said, a hint of annoyance there in his voice.

"Of course you are, dear," Euphemia said. "Well, if you change your mind, just let me know."

When Euphemia left, she made sure to leave the door wide open to give anyone passing an unobstructed view of its inhabitants. James threw his head back dramatically onto a pillow.

"You realize she only came in here to check up on what we were doing," James groaned.

"My parents wouldn't let you in my room in the first place," Lily reminded him. Personally, she thought Euphemia's war between respecting her son's privacy and maintaining decorum was funny. Euphemia had probably hovered on the other side of the door for a few minutes, debating whether she could enter and searching for an excuse.

"We told them we're moving in together in less than two weeks! Don't you think they could ease up on the restrictions a bit?" James said.

"It's their house, and you're their son," Lily said, the only explanation needed.

James sighed. "I know, I just…I can't sleep…without you next to me, I mean. It's unnatural, and I lie awake thinking about how it feels when you're beside me."

Without discussion, it had become a matter of course that Lily would sneak up to the boys' dormitory for the night during their last two months at Hogwarts. Sirius had moaned, loudly and often, about the loss of his privacy, but no one had raised any legitimate objection. The two had developed all the intricacies of a long-married couple. Lily liked to sleep on the left on her side, spooning was acceptable and James' arms wrapped around her waist even better; she required at least two pillows and would inevitably become hot in the night and need her blankets and James to go. James, on the other hand, liked to stay perfectly parallel to the mattress with only one pillow, he required a mountain of blankets to keep warm from the start, and needed Lily to remain in contact with him throughout the night, usually by holding hands or hooking one leg around hers for when she threw his arms off in her sleep.

She knew what it was like to fall asleep to the sound of James' shallow snoring, to wake up with his breath hot and slightly wet against the back of her neck. Lily hadn't struggled to sleep without him while she was staying with her parents, but she had missed their connection. Everything faded to a haze of safety when they were pressed together.

"I know. I miss you, too," Lily said quietly. She ran her thumb across his bottom lip, and James closed his eyes at the tenderness.

"All of this," James groaned, "because they don't want us having premarital sex." Lily could actually spot the moment the answer occurred to him, and James flailed into a sitting position with so much violence that he nearly knocked her out of the bed. "What if we got married? Then, they'll have to let us share a room! Lily Evans, marry me right now!"

Lily was spared from having to answer by Fleamont. Walking by the door, he said casually in passing, "Jimmy, if you think your mother would let you share a room just because you eloped, you're less bright than I believed."

Grinning so wide it felt like her lips might split, Lily said, "Yeah, _Jimmy_."

Then, just because she could, she pinched him.

 **A/N: Have I mentioned that I really love these two? Review & let me know what you think.**


	7. 1978: The One with the Grill

**September 03, 1978**

Lily rolled over in bed, felt the comfort of newly washed sheets, and sighed. Her sinuses were clear and her skin refreshed from the sea breeze blowing through the open window. She wanted to lie in bed all day just breathing in the atmosphere, like peace was something she could consume.

Her work at the Order was nothing like she'd anticipated. Yes, she'd prepared for times of scarcity and the harrowing violence, of seeing someone she knew die. It was the _waiting_ that she hadn't expected, the moments where it felt like she'd fallen out of time altogether and was trapped with nothing but her thoughts, which swirled with fear – for her loved ones, for the unknown, for the sanctity of the human spirit. All imperiled by a few selfish bigots.

After four months of near-death misses and nights spent trembling with anxiety, James had cleared a holiday for them to the sea shore. Busy with their respective work, none of their mates had come, so it was just the James and Lily alone by the sea.

They'd rented a cottage on a stretch of abandoned shore with nary a soul in sight for six kilometers in either direction. Like they'd been carved out of time, the isolation allowed them to truly forego their thoughts on the war for once. It also allowed the young couple to rediscover each other as individuals, not soldiers. Just the night before, Lily had told James that she felt like she'd fallen in love with him all over again.

Unlike the visit to James' parents where they were kept busy to the point of exhaustion, they'd luxuriated in their holiday. Each day was spent hiking across dunes or swimming in the waves, already gone bitterly cold. They would make love in the mornings and again at night. Throughout the course of their six days in the secluded cottage, they'd amassed a pile of ten empty wine bottles, spending every day in a fog of tipsy frivolity.

Lily was full – of food, life, and most importantly, James. Her afternoon nap had been the first significant time they'd spent apart the entire week. (They'd even taken to showering together to maintain the intense connection fostered during the trip.) It was their last night together before reality would barge back in and ruin everything, so James had insisted that Lily rest while he grilled down on the beach.

Weeks before, James had purchased the muggle grill and had practiced (with many fiery disasters along the way) the art of grilling chicken.

Figuring he must be nearly finished with dinner, Lily wandered outside. Their cottage sat on a bluff overlooking the sea where James was set to grill, so she could see the top of James' head as he was busy at work. Only, James wasn't focused on the grill a few meters away. No, he was on his knees in the sand, positioning dozens of polished stones to spell out: "Marry Me!" The exclamation point was unfinished, and as she watched, he reached into a pile of rocks at his side to add to the symbol.

Lily went running. Not a thought in her mind, she raced down from the cottage, stumbling in her haste on the sandy dunes and burning her bare feet. James say Lily coming and went pale. He stood in front of the written message, like he might be able to hide the letters stretched out over five meters with his body.

"You weren't supposed to come down until I called!" James shouted, unnecessarily as she had neared him now.

"I could see from the house," Lily said.

James ran a hand through his hair. "Well, yeah, the goal was for you to come out and I'd be here with the ring out. I was going for romance."

"I don't know what to say," Lily said, a placeholder to reflect from the fact that she'd started to cry.

James took the opening, dropping down to one knee, the muggle way. Lily cried even harder.

"I know it wasn't perfect," James said. "But you are. We are. And I want us to spend the rest of our lives together. And I know you said no only a few months ago, but we're out in the big, scary world now, and I think we've both figured it out for the most part. If you say you're still scared, I'll understand, but I wanted, no needed to ask. Marry me."

"You don't think I'm perfect," Lily gulped out. "You think I'm bossy and a bad cook."

"Oh, that's true. Definitely."

"Oi! You can't insult me while you're proposing," Lily chastised him.

"Sorry, yeah, but you are a bad cook and you're really bossy. It's just the ways you're mad complement the ways I'm mad pretty nicely, I think, so perfect. Yeah, perfect," James said.

Lily sniffed loudly. He was perfect and she loved him and she wanted to marry him and she was very _overwhelmed_. All she could smell was the shrimp and chicken, almost finished cooking on the grill, and she was sure her hair looked like a haystack from the sea breeze buffeting it in every direction.

"I love you so much. This, James, it's beautiful, and it's sweet and everything I could ask for, but…We're only eighteen years old. My parents would never understand. My sister would never understand. Hell, I'm not sure I fully understand. I know I love you so much, and that I dream of being married to you, but it's just not how things are done," Lily said as gently as she could.

In her head, Lily could hear the voices of all their friends berating her for her stupidity. She was nearly paralyzed waiting for James to respond, fearing what he'd think of his second rejection. Yet, the voices of her family drowned out all the others. She couldn't help the way she was raised.

"I should have seen this coming," James said eventually, a half-laugh in his voice.

"Please don't be upset with me," Lily pleaded.

James waved away her concern. "You told me back on that first date, the picnic, that you didn't see yourself getting married until you were older. I'm just an impatient prick when it comes to getting the things I want. I'm impatient, and you're a traditionalist."

"I am a traditionalist," Lily agreed. "I never thought I could even imagine getting married before I was twenty-five, but I love you so much that maybe –"

James kissed her before she could finish, cutting off any promises she might struggle to keep. "You're worth the wait, Evans, so I'll be here when you're ready."

By the time they broke their kiss, the sun had dipped below the mountains in the distance and the sky was ribboned with red. James ran his nose against her own so tenderly that Lily almost burst into tears again.

It was their final night in paradise, and Lily wanted to make the most of it.

With the brightest smile she could manage, Lily pulled free from James' arms and asked, "Want me to bury you up to your head in the sand?"

They both scrambled into action, clearing away the stone letters of James' marriage proposal, the stone exclamation point dashed, and digging at the sand with their bare hands. And they played on the beach until well after the sun had disappeared altogether.

* * *

 **A/N: Review if you enjoyed pls & thank you!**


	8. 1978: The One with the Scare

**A/N: Sorry for the delay. It was definitely inexcusable. I went through a bout of real dedication to my actual follow-up story and then a bout of just not writing at all. Anyway, here's another proposal for our 2 heroes!**

 **November 25, 1978**

She wasn't going to cry.

She wasn't.

The glass of water shook as she brought it to her lips, and Lily errantly feared that an earthquake had struck, but it was only her quavering hands. Some of the water slopped out onto her chin, and she hastily returned the glass to the table.

While Lily drew deep into herself, James was a hurricane of nervous energy. He hadn't stopped pacing since she told him the news, wearing a visible stripe into the carpet with his heavy tread. At this rate, he was on pace to have pulled all of his beautiful hair out before dusk. She wanted to force him to sit down, to drag him by the ear into a chair, and demand he stop bothering her because if he continued she would lose her battle not to cry. Breaking her silence, however, was sure to come with its own agonies. Better to listen to the solid if ominous ticking of the clock.

"It's just not possible," James muttered under his breath.

Lily didn't deign to respond.

Louder this time, James said, "It's just...we were careful!"

The blatant lie brought all of Lily's stress and fear roaring to life and in a fit of pique she knocked the glass of water over entirely. Three weeks late. She was three weeks late, and they were pregnant, and it was not because they had been so careful and there was a war to fight and oh god, oh god, oh god!

"You've been getting lazy," Lily hissed. "Just last night you didn't cast the spell until you were already inside me, and it's hardly the first time! That's how this happened!"

Wartime bred passion in spades. Never knowing when they might be separated by work or tragedy, they were desperate for each other with a hunger that well exceeded the typical hormones of a young couple in love. Nearly every surface of their hideout had born witness to the times where Lily would tackle James with a kiss that led to more, or the times where James would drop to his knees for her. When Dumbledore had visited their hideout for an Order meeting, Lily had burnt red seeing him at the kitchen table: the scene of so many of her orgasms that she feared the wood would always hum with the secret of it.

Passion didn't exactly breed caution. They could become so wrapped up in each other that they wouldn't remember to cast a birth control spell until Lily was already clenching down tight around him, and then, neither were self-composed enough to cast a perfect spell. While Lily couldn't remember a time they'd foregone the spell entirely, they'd had some close calls, and the spell could have failed them on any number of occasions.

She wasn't going to cry.

She wasn't.

"You can't possibly get pregnant from thirty seconds of contact with a prick," James pleaded, like Lily was somehow the decision-maker in this scenario.

"Clearly, you can," Lily said.

James was seconds away from searching for his exits, like he might be able to outrun their problems. Not that he would. Lily knew that his sense of honor wouldn't allow it, and she supposed she ought to be thankful that she wasn't about to be cast aside in favor of some new, beautiful, decidedly un-pregnant witch. A terrible line of thinking, because all her old anxieties about the way to behave and conduct oneself came roaring back, and she was back on the precipice of tears.

Finally, James said, "Well...are you sure you're actually pregnant?"

Lily rolled her eyes. "Three weeks, James. I'm as regular as the setting of the setting sun. I've never been three weeks late. I'm pregnant."

"But you didn't take the potion to check, right?"

The day before, when Lily had finally faced the grim reality and acknowledged that her period had stayed away far too long to be natural, she'd begun the potion that would confirm her pregnancy. Four hours she'd spent at her cauldron when more important work had called to her. Only at the very end did she realize she was missing the final and vital ingredient: neem oil. Peter was set to resupply their hideout the next day and would presumably restock their neem oil selection, but Lily hadn't been able to suffer the wait. One look at her drawn face, and James had demanded an explanation. She'd given it.

"I _told_ you. Marlene used up the last of the neem oil when she was brewing the electrolyte supplement for the blood replenishing potion. We'll be able to tell for sure tomorrow."

Now she was snapping at him, and Lily knew that she ought to reign in her temper because the last thing she could handle was a fight with James on top of everything else, but he wasn't helping. And maybe nothing would help, but it didn't stop her from being angry: angry at him and angry at his goddamn penis.

"We have some fucked up timing," James said. He finally ended his pacing, dropping into the chair behind her. They both faced forward, not looking at each other.

"I hate your prick," Lily said, mutinous.

"You love my prick."

Lily made a noncommittal noise in response. Something broke down inside of her, and when James threw a companionable arm around her shoulders, Lily didn't shrug him off. She leaned her head against the side of his.

"You know they're not going to let you fight while you're pregnant," James said.

"The Order or you?" Lily questioned.

"Both."

She'd known the answer all along and sighed.

"We'll need to get married," James added. Lily twitched slightly, so James continued, "I know it's not how you wanted this to go, but it makes sense, and it's not like you can argue that you don't want to get married because it's not the way things are done. We're knocked up, Lily."

"I don't like it," Lily muttered.

"You've made it very clear how disgusted you are by the idea of marrying me. Plus, I can't imagine it'll be easy being married to someone with a cock you despise, but it's best for our girl, boy, whoever," James said.

Lily's lips quirked, but she patently refused to smile. He wouldn't make her.

James stood up, and Lily clung to his hand in protest. For a moment, at his side, she'd felt almost normal. She wanted to kick herself for denying all of his proposals in the past. All those opportunities to be a legitimate wife with a romantic proposal, and she'd elected for the shotgun wedding approach. Petunia was going to have a field day. In fact,…

"Do you think I'll show at Petunia's wedding?" Lily asked, horrified.

"That would have to be a fast-growing kid," James said. Petunia's wedding was in three weeks and, against the odds, Lily had yet to be thrown from the bridal party. An unmarried pregnancy would guarantee her banishment from all wedding festivities.

"Or twins," Lily said in a horror-struck whisper.

"Okay, let's not panic. First thing's first, we need to confirm that you're pregnant for sure –" Lily quickly interjected that she was, and James continued, "Muggles have pregnancy tests also, right? So let's go buy one. I don't think I can wait for tomorrow. Once that's done, we can write to my parents about our engagement and see about getting you access to the family healer."

Sticking her head between her legs, Lily breathed deep for a few seconds. It always seemed to work in the movies, but, nope, panic still very much present.

"Do you still have that ring?" Lily asked. When James said yes, Lily demanded, "Go grab it."

"What a romantic way to accept a proposal, Evans," James said. "I don't know what's more charming: the hyperventilating or the head in your crotch."

Lily slipped her watch off her wrist just so she could throw it at him. "I'm not hyperventilating, and I want you to get the ring so that the pharmacist doesn't know we're not married. I don't need to deal with people judging us right now."

"Pushy, pushy," James griped before running up the stairs to fetch the ring he'd hidden away.

While he was upstairs, Lily repeated her mantra:

She wasn't going to cry.

She wasn't.

Before they left for the drug store, James took both her hands in his and said, "Lily, I'm petrified, so don't think I'm viewing this as an opportunity. I'm not. It's a terrible time to bring a child into the world. But…I really couldn't love someone more than I love you, and I know this is going to work out."

They apparated to a town in Gloucestershire, hand-in-hand. Before they entered the store, Lily ordered James to pretend that they were overjoyed at the prospect of pregnancy, and they both put on a show for the ten minutes it took them to locate the pregnancy tests and make it through the checkout line. The checkout clerk offered them a smiling congratulations, and James answered with all the right lines about how they'd been trying for months. Artificial as it was, he almost succeeded in convincing Lily that this was a blessing rather than an unmitigated disaster.

Unlike most women, Lily didn't spend the time waiting for the test to finish filled with anxiety. She already knew in her bones that she was pregnant. Stick in hand, James paced the corridor outside the bathroom, shaking the test periodically like he could agitate the results into reality.

Finally, the stick changed colors and James sank to his knees on hardwood. From her seat on the toilet, Lily stared out at him. His face was hidden as he looked down. All that bluster, and he was every bit as terrified as she was.

Sympathetically, Lily said, "You said it yourself, James. We're going to be okay."

Queerly, James said, "You're right. We are going to be okay –" He exploded to his feet with a whooping cheer that shocked Lily so much she almost slid off the toilet seat. " – We're going to be okay because we're not pregnant! Ha!"

"What?" Lily screamed.

James was already rushing her, picking her up off the toilet and spinning her around. The bathroom was so cramped that she dinged her elbow on the sink and her knee on the towel rack, but she didn't give it a thought, too focused on the impossible dream.

"Look! Negative!" James screamed, shoving the test directly in front of her so that it was nothing but a blur. Not trusting him – he could need a new prescription for his specs after all – Lily looked at the test. Sure enough, there was a red minus sign.

Joyously, jubilantly, Lily kissed James on the mouth. Short, firm kisses that blended together as they celebrated. All the while, James babbled his thanks against her lips.

"We don't have to get married!" James cried.

"Whatever, you so want to marry me," Lily teased, even as she rejoiced in turn.

"Sure, but not like that," James grinned and then kissed her some more. "You know…I don't think we'd be remiss to work on that birth control spell right now." Just to be sure she got his meeting, James looked deliberately down between their bodies and then back up.

"Not a fucking chance," Lily growled.

Lily craned away, still in his arms, as he began to kiss her neck. The horny insatiable bastard. She was saved by the sound of Sirius singing in the hallway, newly returned from his mission. Their friend would be exhausted, and they'd need to cook him some dinner and settle him down on the couch to give a full report. There was so much to do, and none of it involved planning for a baby.

She wasn't going to cry.

She wasn't.


	9. 1978: The One with the Wedding

**December 15, 1978**

"Okay, radical idea, just bear with me," James said, vaulting into the empty seat beside her.

"You're not supposed to be in here," the maid of honor hissed in James direction, which Lily and James both pointedly ignored.

Not that the fussy woman didn't have a point. The antechamber was intended for the bridesmaids to prepare for the wedding, which was slated to start in a measly eighty-nine minutes, and had all the trappings of a dressing room – a stocking strewn over a coat rack, air made thick from the constant powdering of noses, and the bride having a miniature meltdown in the corner over the shape of her bouquet while every bridesmaid rushed to reassure her that catastrophe would be averted. Well, almost every bridesmaid.

Lily sat, straight-backed and hair in curlers, far from her hysterical sister. Four hours ago, Petunia had melted down over the hem of her dress and when Lily had gone to comfort her, Petunia had called her a 'tasteless and dizzy cow.' Lily had vowed to leave Petunia to her own consolation after that.

"I'm in need of a radical idea right now," Lily murmured, not quite under-her-breath but more out of the side of her mouth, like she feared a lip-reader might be lurking nearby.

"Okay, let's you and I…elope," James announced.

Lily nodded, "Right and this accomplishes what exactly?"

"Well, your sister can't be cross if you can't be in her wedding because you were busy attending your own. Pure coincidence that you happened to schedule the event for the same day," James said.

An hour ago, Lily had thought she would never smile once during the whole, horrid affair of Petunia's wedding. Her nerves were stretched as thin as Petunia's own. James had reduced Vernon to a puce mess of sweat only the night before when discussing the value of gold, Petunia had made her cry twice in the week she'd been home for the wedding, and her dress was red and clashed horrifically with her hair. Any good humor felt impossibly far from her current state, and yet there she sat, smiling in spite of herself at James' suggestion.

"I dare you to go suggest that to her right now," Lily said.

"Why, I've always found your sister to be an incredibly reasonable and even-tempered woman. I'm sure she'll understand," James said with that wicked smirk that always promised trouble.

"I take back my dare," Lily said quickly, knowing James was very bored and therefore very much capable of causing trouble for trouble's sake. "I like having a living boyfriend, and when Petunia's done with you after a jest like that, I'll be forced to settle for the inferi version of you."

"Is it sick that I'm touched you would bring me back as a rotting inferi instead of just getting a new bloke?" James asked.

"No to the elopement," Lily said, ignoring him.

They were sitting faced in front of a mirror vaulted onto the wall, both making eye contact through the reflection. James looked delicious, the kind of man that made a girl want to run away and get married. He was dressed in a tuxedo, but it was marginally too loose, which gave him a look of unfussy and effortless elegance, and he was burnt copper from all the time he'd spent in the sun that summer. She, on the other hand, looked like a middle-aged mum with her curlers stacked high atop her head and the hearty heaping of rouge that Petunia's friend, Stacey, had forced upon her. Worse, her weariness from days spent with Petunia was clear on her pinched brow and the white line of her lips.

"I'm not married to the marriage idea," James joked, "I am, however, worried what's going to happen to you if I leave you in here much longer. Your mouth's disappearing."

"I'm fine," Lily said.

James took her hand, nails manicured and polished a baby-blue that reminded her of a squalling infant. "Okay. But if you need an out, just do the secret sign during the ceremony, and I'll announce our wedding, and we're out of there."

"And what's the secret sign?"

James hummed. "Do you think jumping jacks are suitably subtle?"


	10. 1979: The One with the Kiss Cam

**A/N: I'm going to be honest, I took some liberties with the timeline here (Quidditch cup in winter) because this chapter was initially supposed to be the 11** **th** **, not 10** **th** **installment, but it's finished and the 11** **th** **isn't, and it's been some time since I updated, so…Also took some liberties with the magical technology in this one, and I don't care one wit because it's cute.**

* * *

 **February 27, 1979**

Lily was reminded of why she hated Quidditch as sweat collected on her back. When she shifted in her seat, her thighs clung stubbornly to the leather. She'd purchased a paper fan from a vendor, but the flimsy paper was no match for the beating sun.

Her friends were some of the few British nationals that had gained permission to attend the Quidditch Cup in Brazil that winter. Since the war started, the border had been closed-down tight in a Ministry-led effort to block the expansion of the death eater scourge to their neighbors. Britain was receiving paltry monetary support from the German, French and Danish ministries, support that would be rescinded if Voldemort's ideology spread to their lands. (More pessimistically, some thought it was a death eater policy to keep muggleborns trapped within.)

With so much chaos at all levels of government, however, the Ministry was desperate to maintain the financial support of the few old families that hadn't joined the other side. Namely, the Potters. So, James had been given special dispensation to pick a few of his closest friends to portkey to the match, assuming he would return immediately after play ended. James and Sirius had just come off an exhausting four-week reconnaissance mission, so Dumbledore had ordered they take a two-week rest, aligning perfectly with the match. Lily had worked sixteen-hour shifts for the last week to make sure the Order's potion stores were adequately stocked, so that she could afford the day away – all for a Quidditch match she was sure to despise; the agonies of loving someone. Since all their other friends at the Order had been buried by work, James had invited Shelia – their only friend from Gryffindor who hadn't joined either the Order or the aurors – to accompany them.

James was breathlessly enraptured by the game, of course, but there was one feature of the stadium that had managed to capture his fancy as well: a great magical camera scoured the stands during timeouts, projecting fans onto the hundred screens riddled throughout the imposing stadium. Given the fact that all four members of their group were beautiful and young, and two of them were prone to theatric displays, the camera was obsessed with the reunited Gryffindors.

When the camera swung in their direction again, Lily edged away from James (probably a good idea regardless as he was trying to lift Sirius onto his shoulders) and sat straight-backed. She'd grown to accept the attention James brought with him on a daily basis. When they first left Hogwarts, she'd begged him to stop making a spectacle of himself every time they went out in public – one incident where he juggled all the fruit at the market came to mind – but she'd grown to bear it with a roll of her eyes. Being inspected by half a _million_ people was a new level of exposure. One she hadn't learned to handle.

The barest breeze threatened to knock a wobbling Sirius off James' shoulders. They teetered ominously. Looking up at the screens, the boys realized, however, that they no longer had the attention of the cameras. Another group of boys had gained the stadium's attention by forming a human pyramid in the stands. James growled lowly at the competition.

The other group consisted of nine students on holiday from Mahoutokoro school, and they'd been in an explicit battle with James and Sirius for the better part of three hours, competing for the focus of the cameras. Sirius had begun to keep score of how many times each group was featured. Every time her boys managed to bring the cameras their way with a well-timed prank or a practical gag (they'd playacted a fist fight earlier to applause that shook the stadium), the Mahoutokoro kids burst into a synchronized dance or charmed their skin to their national colors to send the stadium into an uproar of patriotic fervor (the match was Brazil vs. Japan), and the camera would swivel away again.

James and Sirius were cross.

Even as he kept one eye on the unfolding match, James head leaned in the direction of Sirius, who ignored play in favor of brainstorming their next attention-grabbing stunt.

"Your boyfriend's an idiot," Shelia murmured to Lily.

"Hey, worry about your own man," Lily said.

"I'm not seeing anyone," Shelia pointed out.

"That's why you should be worried," Lily said before snickering profusely at her own joke. Shelia rubbed at her eyes like she found Lily infinitely tiring. To be fair, Lily had demanded Shelia walk her through almost every play in the game thus far because to her untrained eye, it just looked like streaks of color in the sky. Lily was a little on the tiring side.

A bludger to the head of one of the Japanese chasers brought the game to a time out as healers flooded the field to check on the player's status, and his teammates huddled to discuss strategy. The camera was sure to move to the group of Japanese students, who clutched at their chests in nationalistic agony. Busy in their own huddle, Sirius failed to mark it on his scoresheet.

The injury on the field looked nasty, so Lily peered through her binoculars to see how the Japanese chaser was managing. Earlier when she'd tried to use the binoculars, the activity on the field had given her a headache. With everyone relatively static, she was able to focus on the players for the first time. Blood was pouring from the chaser's nose.

Busy with the field, Lily made the tactical error of not watching Sirius and James. It was a rookie mistake, and one she was ashamed of. She lived by a single maxim: keep one eye on the Marauders at all times, or you don't get to cry when things go sideways.

Lily surely would have snapped to attention had she seen Sirius unearth his wand. He transfigured his ticket and passed the new object off to James.

After that, the match picked up dramatically. The two teams traded off on the lead, and even Lily could admit it was incredible. James had been the most talented player at Hogwarts, but he didn't belong in the same class as these athletes. They moved as sleekly and sharply through the sky as an L-39 Albatros. In comparison, James was an albatross as in the goofy looking bird.

It wasn't until half the Brazilian team had suspended play to screech at the referee that the camera turned its attention back to their little group. Lily joined the rest of the stadium in turning to see what drama James and Sirius would enact now. She wasn't prepared to see James bent on one knee with the object Sirius had transfigured, a bloody ring, glimmering up at her. Then, he asked her to marry him.

Few wizards bent a knee during a proposal, but everyone recognized the gesture. A hush befell the stadium.

Lily glanced around nervously. She couldn't decide if it was worse to look at the hundreds of thousands of spectators or James' beseeching smile. There were actual tears hovering at the corner of his eyes as he waited for her answer.

And Lily smelled a rat.

"Is this for real?" she whispered.

James winked before nodding his head exaggeratedly for their audience. Under his breath, he answered, "I mean, it could be if you want."

The crowd was starting to get restless at Lily's lack of answer. Even the players had paused to wait for her acceptance.

"Please know that if you ever actually propose to me in front of so much as one other person, I'll kill you," Lily told him, trying to move her lips as little as possible.

"Noted. Now just say yes, so we can kiss and the crowd can cheer," James said. "My knee's starting to hurt."

"Fine, I'll play along," Lily conceded. Projecting to be heard, Lily announced, "No! No, I can't marry you!"

Her words appeared on the screen in a speech bubble. The rejection came as a shock to the audience who let out a collective wail of disappointment. Thousands of people started to boo her.

"What? Why?" James demanded, and his legitimate shock gave his words credence. In just the same way, his words were projected up onto the screen.

"I can't because…because I'm having Sirius's baby!"

Everyone lost it. People from up in the stands pelted pretzels down at her. Their Japanese competition were forgotten entirely as James and Sirius won their decided victory.

Sirius knocked James aside to take Lily up in his arms. "Is it true? You should have told me sooner!" He yanked the ring from James grip and dropped to his knees. "Lily, marry me instead!"

This time, Lily said yes, and Sirius swept her up into a stage kiss. Their faces were tucked so tightly together that the crowd could only make out their proximity. In reality, his lips met her cheek, and she lowered her head to look like she was returning his kiss. Throughout it all, James pantomimed like he was considering hurling himself from the stands and thousands of meters to his death, and a reluctant Shelia was forced to play the part of holding him back from his certain demise.

Attention remained on their group for another five minutes, despite play resuming, because their melodrama was simply too intense. Only when the snitch was spotted and the seekers went sailing past did the cameras reluctantly move away from the scene.

To keep up the charade, Lily sat on Sirius's lap for the rest of the match, James seated as far from the two of them as possible. He was near the aisle, so several wizards walking past stopped to offer him their condolences. Several bought him a drink. Everyone had nothing but sneers of disgust for Lily and Sirius. Every time someone approached, James had to tear his gaze away from the match and feign abjection, and his eyes had started to itch from all of the fake tears.

Confident that no one would hear them, Lily shouted through the din of cheering, "You know what, James, you've been right all these years. Quidditch really is fun."

James' answering hand gesture was caught by the camera.

* * *

 **A/N: I would like to take this space to let everyone know that the first chapter of my new multichapter, for real fic has just been posted & you should definitely go read it if you liked the bet, because I'm in this one for the long haul.**

 **Thanks for reading. Reviews are love.**


	11. 1979: The One with the Funeral Dirge

**March 10, 1979**

It couldn't have happened to two lovelier people.

That's what everyone kept saying throughout the funeral and in the condolence cards Lily skimmed afterwards.

They'd received the news on a Thursday, six days past.

Snow had packed high outside their safehouse, and the wood floors had been frigid.

She'd been reading a status report from Mad Eye, always painful since he had the habit of redacting nearly everything as need-to-know.

James had been reading a book on defensive spells, studying.

The message had come through the floo.

Just Arthur Weasley's head in the fireplace.

His breath was visible and green in the cold.

Then, the news.

Fleamont Potter was dead.

* * *

Regardless of exigent circumstances, James would have been devastated by his father's death; but, the situation had horrifically, impossibly worsened.

Travel in wartime was difficult, and there'd been a particularly nasty attack using the floo system only the week before, so it took them nearly an hour to travel to Stinchcombe, where Euphemia was meant to be waiting. James had sprinted out of the fireplace, racing for his mother's bedroom. A groundsman, who lived in a cottage on the property, caught James before he could make it up the stairs and delivered the terrible news.

Fleamont had succumbed to Dragon Pox. The same strain that had ailed Euphemia. The same strain that had ultimately killed her a half hour before they'd arrived.

In a world where Euphemia Potter had lived, Lily believed James would have closeted his grief in order to be a rock for his mother. Without her, he was untethered.

It had been six days since they heard the news, and he hadn't so much as smiled once.

The funeral that morning had been a miserable affair. Wizarding Britain had become inoculated to death, so the sound of James' crying had carried all the more for everyone else's sobriety. James' pain wrecked Lily, and she was the only one who sobbed louder as they bade their final farewells to the Potters.

Afterwards, the mourners had retired back to the Potter estate. People milled about, telling stories of Fleamont's temper getting him into trouble and Euphemia's struggles with an errant son. The guests laughed as they looked at a life in review and deemed it well spent.

James wasn't much of a host throughout. He sat in a corner of the parlor, chin propped on his hands and eyes cast aimlessly toward the wallpaper. Filling in for James' reticence, Remus ran through the house, thanking people for their attendance and giving some order to the event. James had been no help in preparing the funeral either. The task had been split between Remus and Lily, each taking turns away from James' side to make sure the instructions Euphemia had detailed in her will were followed.

They – Lily, Sirius, Remus and Peter – all felt helpless. James couldn't be consoled. They'd all given it their shot. Sirius had plied James with enough booze to fell a giant, but James just wept when the alcohol hit his system. Remus had reminisced about his best memories of Euphemia and Fleamont, but James had retracted further at his attempts. Peter had talked about his own experiences with pain, a commiseration that James had squashed.

For her part, Lily had mostly been a steady presence at his side. When the silence grew too unbearable, Lily would tell him how much she loved him and make promises to never leave him alone. She tried to comfort him with tactile reminders of her promises, constant hand-holding and backrubs. On the fourth night, she'd tried sex, and James had seemed to lose a sliver of his shell of numbness at the suggestion, but his libido was shot, and they'd had to give up. Immediately, he was back to the same muted agony.

Occasionally, guests walked past where the two sat and whispered at James' isolation. Everyone was all sympathy for the orphaned son.

Lily lifted James' hand from his chair's armrest. He didn't so much as look at her, wrist limp. She was startled by the ice of his fingers, and rubbed her own hands around his to generate some heat.

Suffocating fear was starting to rise up in her, along with the bile in her stomach. Six days and not a sign that James was processing his grief, not a sign that he would come out okay on the other side. He was wallowing in his heartbreak, and maybe that was allowed. Lily wasn't exactly an expert on mourning. Still, she needed a sign from him that he was going to recover.

The night before, she'd met the other Marauders in the pantry to discuss James' condition. They were uniformly frightened for him. Sirius had concocted a number of wild plans, all designed to break James from his lethargy. James had fallen apart, and they all agreed he couldn't wait too long before reassembling the pieces.

Lily decided on a new tactic to draw James out.

The floor was uncarpeted and cold, but Lily knelt down in front of James' chair all the same, bracketed the chair with her arms. She waited until her unusual posture drew James' attention. His eyes didn't lose that glassy unfocus, but he did look at her, an emotion less strong than curiosity in his eyes.

Quietly, Lily said, "James, ask me to marry you."

"No."

It was a minor victory these days just to get James to speak.

"James, I want you to ask me," Lily said again.

"I don't want your sympathy," James said.

"Good because that's not what I'm offering. See, I want you to ask me to marry you, so that I can reject you for the bazillionth time. I figure your week's not going bad enough as it is. Why not add a rejected proposal to the mix?" Lily said. It was a strain to smile, but she managed to show teeth and everything.

"Not bad enough…" James murmured the words, caught somewhere between a question and a statement.

"Yep. After I reject you, I've paid Remus to come over here and kick you in the kneecaps," Lily said.

James didn't smile, didn't even blink, but he did say, "Lily, will you marry me?"

Her throat vibrated shut and an unexpected wave of tears burst through her. She recognized that it wasn't a serious proposal, but she couldn't bear to say no all the same. He was so soft and vulnerable and _motherless_. But then the immensity of what James had said swept through her, and Lily was smiling.

"That was a joke. You just participated in a joke," Lily said through a wet chuckle.

"It is funny you brought that up," James said, ironically devoid of humor. "Because I've been carrying this around all day."

He unballed his fist to reveal the gaudiest ring Lily had ever seen. The diamond in the center was a hulking piece, worth more than Lily's parents would earn over the course of ten years. Along the edges, milgrain beading had been welded to the band. The more carefully Lily looked, the more details were revealed to her; the ring was as intricate as a Faberge piece.

"My mum always said…she always said she almost refused my dad, when he put this on her finger. She'd wanted something more elegant, less…loud," James said.

"Your mother was –" Lily cut herself off. She couldn't bear to use the past-tense. "I've always admired your mum's taste."

"She hated it, she said. But from the day they married on, she never took it off for any reason."

James flexed his hand compulsively, the tendons of his arms rising to the surface and then disappearing again. He did this a few times, like he couldn't stand to look at the ring for too long, or like he was afraid a thief might tear it away, the ring as lost as his parents.

"She never took it off, Lily. Never. And now…I don't know what to do with it. I can't stand just leaving it to sit in a drawer. She wouldn't want that. It should be with her. I have no right to…" James trailed off miserably.

Euphemia's will had explicitly forbidden the ring be buried alongside her. Not because she thought it was too tasteless for the afterlife, but because she wanted James to bear it, a reminder of her and her husband. Perhaps, the ring was too effective a reminder because James looked as if he'd swallowed the ring and was choking on it. The ring was a symbol of legacy, a symbol of their expectation that James should continue to live his life and forge a path beyond them. James wasn't ready to face the reality of living with his parents no longer in the world.

"I don't know what to do with it. I don't know," James repeated.

A foreign calm settled upon Lily, the wisdom of millennia of women – Euphemia included – possessing her. They told her what to do, when she was stumbling in the dark of pain. Gently, Lily closed her hand overtop of his, so that the diamond edges cut into her palm.

"I'll wear it, okay?" Lily said. "I'll wear it, and I promise, I'll never take it off. Never. Just like your mum."

He didn't put it on for her; she had to slide it onto her left ring finger herself, but he held onto her at the wrist, his thumb crushing into bone. Fixated on the diamond glittering on her slim finger, James was silent. Behind her, the clamor of the wake continued: the ding of china and the laugh of a drunken uncle. All of it faded to nothing, so Lily only heard James' labored breathing. Slowly, he bowed his head, so that it rested atop her outstretched hand, the ring digging painfully into his skin.

Something wet slid down her arm. His tears.

They didn't move for a long time.

* * *

 **A/N: Would you believe it if I said this is actually a happier ending than the one I initially intended? Also, technically two proposals (of a sort) in one here.**

 **I have every intention of finishing this series, but updates will be slow (in case you haven't all figured that out from the months in between lol) because I've finally started posting my new multichapter, which is my bigger commitment. If you aren't already reading it, please do.**

 **Anyway, hope this was enjoyable on top of being heartbreaking. Reviews are always appreciated**


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